VIVA WILBUR!!!!

Somehow over the course of my life, even though I was a frequent visitor to White Oak Library on New Hampshire Ave., I somehow missed reading one of the most widely read kid’s book out there…Charlotte’s Web. I slipped through the cracks of the educational system. I AM A STATISTIC! I AM STATISTIC!!! Just another example of the failure of the American educational system, PBS, The Reading Rainbow, and yes even Geordi La Forge, aka LeVar Burton. I mean what kid, who loves reading, hasn’t read Charlotte’s Web for heaven’s sake?!

Long story made even longer by my commentary on the story, I am now reading Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. According to the little forward in the book E.B. White wrote the story to entertain himself, but I don’t know if this is Disney “Bambi” type entertainment like where Bambi’s mom is shot by the hunter or Disney “Lion King” type entertainment where Mustafa is killed by Scar (apparently I have issues with Disney animators killing off/not continuing to draw beloved cartoon characters, talk about “rubbing” someone out, ha!). So here I am reading the adventures of this little Wilbur pig and I am TERRIFIED that Wilbur is going to die! I don’t want Wilbur to die! NOT WILBUR!!! SAVE WILBUR!!!!!!

I am pretty certain that Charlotte isn’t going to make it much longer, she is already talking about how she is tired and feeling like she is at the end of her life, etc. But I think I can handle Charlotte’s death, because she is leaving behind 514 eggs, but Wilbur?! I will be heartbroken. It’s like I read Wilbur and my mind thinks “Babe” whose mom was herded off to the slaughterhouse and poor Babe thought she was going off to pig heaven which was so glorious and amazing no pig ever came back.

Why I have this strange porcine sympathy, and I sweated bullets over the fate of Babe and I am now worried that E.B. White wanted to teach kids some sort of life lesson by killing off Wilbur like those monsters at Disney surely would have done I don’t know. But VIVA WILBUR!!!!